In certain applications, embossed and/or indented characters, such as lines, numbers, letters, symbols, etc., on a personalized document, e.g., a credit card, need to be verified or recognized. Prior approaches included imaging a card using a digital camera and an illumination source such as a Cloudy Day Illuminator (CDI) so that the embossed characters thereof can be verified or recognized by digitizing the image of the embossed card.
In addition, the personalized document may include a magnetic stripe and/or an embedded integrated circuit or smartcard chip for storing magnetic and/or smartcard chip data which need to be verified.